Cowboy Fantasy. Ann Major

to search her built-in drawers for another suit. In the second drawer she found a stack of videocassette tapes. Blushing, remembering where she’d found them and what they were of, she fisted her hands like a defiant child. Then she slammed the drawer.

      How could her parents watch those things? Sex? Why was it so important to everybody except her?

      She’d made her choices. Why, oh why, did they have to be so hard to live with? Why, oh why, did she have to be the only modern girl in all of the United States who had hang-ups about sex?

      “Get over it,” Cathy, her best friend would say. “You know what they say, practice makes perfect.”

      North’s cockiness and blatant sexiness along with Melody’s natural wariness weren’t going to get her down tonight. Neither was his cool, calculated indifference. Tonight would be short and sweet, like they’d agreed. Then they’d go their separate ways.

      Tonight wasn’t going to be about sex!

      She picked up the red suit and pulled it on. When she saw herself, she gasped at how much of her backside was hanging out.

      Through her gauzy curtains, she could see North and her father talking amiably, more amiably than when she’d been out there with them. She was too far away to hear the rumble of his deep drawl, too far for it to send shivers through her, but it was all too obvious, North was much more relaxed when she wasn’t around.

      Likewise.

      He lounged against the garage, his arms crossed, his long legs sprawled apart, laughing at something her father said. When she’d been out there, too, he’d stood stiffly by her father’s side, his eyes on the shrimp appetizers sizzling on the grill, his answers to her father’s questions brief and uninformative when Sam had done his best to ask intelligent questions about the ranch or roundup and the drought.

      Sam had watched them both as he’d taken a lengthy pull of his imported beer. “Long, hot summer?”

      “Yes.”

      “Bad for ranching?”

      North had nodded.

      For the first time Melody had noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the weariness behind his smiles. He’d been working too hard she could tell.

      “Any chance of rain?” her father had asked.

      “Not unless we get a hurricane.”

      “It rained out west last night.”

      Then Melody had asked, “What do you hear from your mother, North?”

      “Not much.”

      “Do you miss her?”

      “What the hell kind of question is that?” he’d snapped.

      North, who had been so dark and intense in the foyer, hadn’t even looked up from the grill when she’d joined them there or when she’d spoken. Not even when he’d burst out at her so angrily. His refusal to do so had gotten her even more dizzily nervous than she’d been in the foyer when he’d pinned her against the wall.

      First, he’d been all over her in the foyer. Then in the backyard, not only hadn’t she existed, she’d been the last person he intended to confide in.

      But he’d come over, and he made her feel alive, as she hadn’t in months. More alive than in India or any other exotic locale.

      In the six months since that night, she’d gone to India and Manhattan and Boston and then back to Texas. She’d moved into a tiny cottage with an older woman named Elizabeth, who was a musician in the Austin music scene. Elizabeth did gigs almost every night. Home alone, Melody had realized she was lonelier than she ever had been in her whole life. Even so, after North she hadn’t wanted to date.

      She’d gotten up every morning, flossed and brushed her teeth, washed her hair and gone out to her menial job at the park. Her parents hadn’t understood her not getting a “real” job, not using her education. But she’d preferred wandering through the park, being out with nature, even picking up garbage, to a real adult job.

      Nights, she’d showered and gotten into bed—alone again. Her life had been a dull routine until that day Randy Hunter, a guy she intensely disliked from school in Corpus Christi, had shown up at the park.

      He’d leaned against the door of her tiny tollbooth, trapping her inside. “You look awful good in those short shorts, sugar.” His hot eyes had lingered on her legs long after she’d handed him his receipt and change.

      “What is that getup, a little rangerette costume?”

      “I’m a park tech.”

      “Aren’t you the girl that used to wear red panties in elementary school?”

      She hadn’t answered.

      “What color are you wearing under—”

      Shaking, she’d closed her eyes in mute panic. “Why don’t you go enjoy the park.”

      “You still like sexy underwear?”

      Randy had come to the park too often after that. But what had really bothered her was the package somebody had sent her later the same week. When she’d opened it and a pair of red thong panties had spilled out of it, she’d quit on the spot.

      And come running home.

      To North.

      No. No. But, when Melody lifted her gauzy curtain and caught another glimpse of North, her heart started hammering. He did make her feel, make her feel she was real, make her know that she wanted more than she had.

      And North wanted her, too.

      Which was why she’d run from him.

      Yet what she felt for him was profoundly different than anything she’d ever felt for another man. Suddenly she realized that she’d thought about him for months and months even when she hadn’t admitted it to herself.

      When her mother had sent her applications for an internship in Paris, Melody hadn’t bothered to fill the papers out. Paris had suddenly seemed too far away. Why had she turned down so many wonderful opportunities?

      She told North she wanted adventures with other less controlling men, men who didn’t press her to give what she couldn’t give. The truth was she had zero interest in other men. Zero interest in being so far away.

      Still, North was all wrong for her. Maybe he was only twenty-nine, maybe he was only seven years older than she was; still, because he’d assumed massive responsibilities at such a young age, he seemed a lifetime ahead of her. He’d managed a difficult family, employees, land, animals and lots of money. As a result, he seemed so sure of himself, he made her feel even younger and less certain than she did with other people.